SELECT PRAISE

BASTARDS OF THE REAGAN ERA, Mr. Betts’s second volume of verse, demonstrates his ability to use the musical power of words to convey what it is like to grow up black and marginalized, and the crushing, humiliating experience of prison. 

The entire language about concurrent sentence, parole, probation, resentencing report. All of these words that have nothing to do with real life, I have no reason now to ever have a conversation about them, but they become something that defines you.